operate

verb

Etymology: From Latin operātus, perfect passive participle of operor (“to work, labor, toil, have effect”), see -ate (verb-forming suffix).

1. To perform a work or labour; to exert power or strength, physical or mechanical; to act.

   “Could someone explain how this meeting operates?”

   “In this town, the garbage removal staff operate between six o'clock at midnight.”

2. To produce an effect.

   “We live our lives in three dimensions for our threescore and ten allotted years. Yet every branch of contemporary science, from statistics to cosmology, alludes to processes that operate on scales outside of human experience: the millisecond and the nanometer, the eon and the light-year.”

3. To produce an effect.

   “The drug operates by facilitating the negative neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), resulting in the blocking of neural long-term potentiation.”

4. To produce an effect.

   “The Virtues of private Perſons, how Bright and Exemplary ſoever, operate but on Few; on thoſe only who are near enough to obſerve, and inclin'd to imitate them: their ſphere of Action is narrow, and their Influence is confin'd to it.”

   “A plain, convincing reason operates on the mind both of a learned and ignorant hearer as long as they live.”

5. To bring about as an effect; to cause.

   “Strictures upon style, which are for the most part good, but time has operated a change in many respects even since he wrote.”

   “It is supposed that western Europe was overpopulated and that the crusades operated a beneficial reduction of numbers.”

6. To perform some manual act upon a human body in a methodical manner, and usually with instruments, with a view to restore soundness or health, as in amputation, lithotomy, etc.

   “The surgeon had to operate on her heart.”

   “I'm being operated tomorrow.”

7. To deal in stocks or any commodity with a view to speculative profits.
8. To put into, or to continue in, operation or activity; to work.

   “to operate a machine”

   “to operate a system”